mylifeinaminute.com » Windows SharePoint Services

A Manager’s Guide to SharePoint

liquidpooled — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:42:11 +0000

The Acuff Group recently posted a whitepaper titled A Manager’s Guide to SharePoint [PDF] which makes for an interesting afternoon read.

SharePoint Solution Downloader

liquidpooled — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:22:24 +0000

One of my pain points as a SharePoint “administrator” is having to deal with deployments of solution packages to my environment without the best change management. This means that I often see packages making their way in to the environment without any thought given to keeping the package in case it needs to be reapplied at a later time (Note: I’m not the only one who controls what goes into the environment).

The solution? I whipped up a Windows application so download one, several, or all of the solution packages currently stored in the farm configuration database.

I have posted the application to CodePlex @ http://spsolutiondownloader.codeplex.com/.

The application must be run in the context of a Farm Administrator (i.e. right-click, Run As…) on a server in the farm for which you wish to download the solution package(s) from and requires the .NET Framework 3.5.

I would love some feedback from the community as to whether or not this useful. I have some other little apps in mind I could put together with the proper motivation.

SharePoint Designer – The Cat Is Out of the Bag

liquidpooled — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:20:17 +0000

Today marks the official release of SharePoint Designer as a free product offering from Microsoft. While overall, this announcement can certainly be considered a good thing by the SharePoint community (who doesn’t like free stuff?), as a SharePoint “administrator” it makes me cringe. It is a good thing all of us have “locked down” SharePoint Designer in our respective environments.

You did remember to lock down, didn’t you?

[Download]

Exception: The content type is in use

liquidpooled — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:53:14 +0000

I’ve found that working with InfoPath is becoming more and more of a chore. A form I’ve been working on has had its promoted columns changed a number of times (Side note: I would just love to have a defined specification).

Today when I attempted to completely retract my form (inlcuding manually deleting the content type associated with the form), I was presented with the always helpful error “The content type is in use“. This is by far one of the more helpful errors you will ever see from SharePoint. Unfortunately it isn’t clear how to discover where the content type is actually in use. A quick trip to the content database for the site collection you are working in can show us:

DECLARE @ContentTypeName nvarchar(128)

SET @ContentTypeName='Content Type Name Here'

SELECT w.Title AS [Web Site], w.FullUrl AS [Web Url], al.tp_Title AS [List Title],
	ct2.*
FROM ContentTypes ct1
	JOIN ContentTypes ct2 ON LEFT(ct2.ContentTypeId, Len(ct1.ContentTypeId))=ct1.ContentTypeId
	LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.ContentTypeUsage ctu ON LEFT(ctu.ContentTypeId, Len(ct2.ContentTypeId)) = ct2.ContentTypeId
	LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.AllLists al ON ctu.ListId = al.tp_Id AND ctu.WebId=al.tp_WebId
	LEFT OUTER JOIN dbo.Webs w ON al.tp_WebId = w.Id WHERE ct1.ResourceDir=@ContentTypeName

[Credit to Curtis Ruppe]

Once we know where the content type is in use, deleting it through the GUI is a trivial matter.

MSDN Magazine: 10 Best Practices For Building SharePoint Solutions

liquidpooled — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:16:44 +0000

MSDN Magazine has a SharePoint focused article this month titled 10 Best Practices For Building SharePoint Solutions. If you’re trying to wrap your head around the scope and depth of developing solutions on top of SharePoint, the article makes for a good primer.

InfoPath Custom Initiation Form “stuck” on “Installing”

liquidpooled — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:32:22 +0000

When developing custom InfoPath initiation forms for my workflows, I sometimes forget a crucial step when publishing the forms. If you enter an alternate location when publishing your form, the form state will become stuck on “Installing”.

The moral of the story? When publishing a custom initiation form, be sure to leave the “Alternate” publishing location empty.

zevenseas LifeCycle Management Released

liquidpooled — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:31:20 +0000

zevenseas has released their SharePoint LifeCycle Management solution to CodePlex. The LifeCycle Management solution can be used to track unused SharePoint sites as well as capture and automatically back-up sites. Actions can be defined to use against your unused sites, such as emailing the site owner, locking the site, or even deleting it.

What are you waiting for? Go check it out!

Tools for your SharePoint Toolbox: SPTraceView

liquidpooled — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:58:18 +0000

SPTraceView (by Hristo Pavlov) is a tool which allows a user (with console and/or RDP access to a SharePoint server) to view the trace logs for SharePoint in real time. Parsing through ULS logs can be a tedious process, but being able to see the events as they occur certainly makes it much more palatable.

SPTraceView can be used in either a single server or a farm scenario, although a farm does require some configuration.

New to SharePoint? Administrator’s Guide of Topics to Consider before Deployment

liquidpooled — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:01:39 +0000

The SharePoint documentation team at Microsoft is at it again, this time posting a new white paper called “Administrator’s Guide of Topics to Consider before Deployment“.

[Via To The SharePoint]

Some Background on CAS Policies

liquidpooled — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:26:38 +0000

Reza Alirezaei has a good post on the behind the scenes of CAS policies and SharePoint.

Check it out.